Canberra will need potentially "thousands" more electricians skilled up to achieve the ACT's electrification goals with preparation needed now to encourage more high schoolers to join the trade, and to offer better wages to apprentices.
That's the view of those on the trade such as Benn Masters, who runs Solarhub, one of Canberra's largest and most successful solar and household battery installation companies, and Ben Caldwell, co-director of a smaller electrical, solar and air-conditioning company Electricooled, which employs one apprentice and has plans to engage another.
On Wednesday, the ACT government announced plans to spend $500,000 on scoping a major expansion of the Fyshwick CIT campus to build a centre of excellence and a Future Energy Skills Hub, leveraging funds from the $12.6 billion National Skills Agreement announced last year by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Mr Masters said he would be keen to see meaningful outcomes from the ACT government's upcoming Renewables Industry Skills Plan, which aims to address skills and workforce issues, as this would be a crucial component to eliminate natural gas from the ACT network and switch completely to electricity.
"The ACT's electrification plans are very ambitious; probably the most ambitious in the country," he said.
"In order to get people off gas, in order to achieve that big [electrification] goal, there needs to be thousands of electricians skilled up to make it happen.
"The sparkie who is used to doing a house fit-out, lights, powerpoints, that sort of thing doesn't necessarily have the specialist skills required to do this electrification work.
"We are talking about solar specialities, energy storage products, obviously the smart home stuff that connects all this stuff together; these are knowledge sets that really need to be developed and they are just not readily available in the [jobs] market."
Solarhub trains up its 70-strong workforce internally, and with the help of supplier companies which are constantly rolling out new products "because there's new stuff coming out all the time and people need to be trained in it".
"Even with a skilled electrician, it takes up 12 months or more to get them up to speed," Mr Masters said.
"The cost of labour is quite high, the cost of training is high; if the government is going to step in and help with some of that, it would certainly help companies like ours."
Those who install solar panels, inverters, battery systems and air conditioning say the public has a poor understanding of how hot and physical the "grunt" work involved is, crawling through and pulling conduits and electrical wiring through tight roof cavities, and setting panels on a reflective metal roof in the blazing sun.
Mr Caldwell accepts that it's all part of the job but that doesn't make it any easier.
"In summer we often see temperatures of 55 degrees or more when working in a cavity space under a metal roof," he said.
"And working up on the roof, it's very hot work, too, lifting up the panels, fixing them off and wiring them in."
